i am an offering

As I opened up my browser at home this past week, an interesting article caught my eye.  It was entitled “Elton John: Religion encourages hatred.”

His statements were pretty bold. “Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays,” and “I would ban religion completely. Organized religion doesn’t seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it’s not really compassionate.”

While he makes some very broad and generalized statements, he does have a pretty good point.  It seems like more and more, instead of following Jesus’s command to “love your neighbor as yourself,” we have started to follow the command of “always view people’s sins as worse than yourself.”

Instead of following Jesus’s example of compassion and loving people out of darkness, we try to hit them as hard as we can out of darkness, all the while claiming to be followers of Jesus, when really we’re just being “Christians” (see post below)

Let’s take a look at Elton John’s view of religion compared to the apostle Paul’s view of following Jesus.

• Elton John says that religion “turns people into really hateful lemmings.”
  
  The apostle Paul tells us in Romans 12 to “not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  A lemming follows the crowd, a follower of Jesus follow the one and only Son of God.
  
  
  
• Elton John says that religion is “not really compassionate.”
  
  The apostle Paul says in Colossians to “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” (Colossians 3:12)

If we are holding to the teachings of the apostles, who first held to the radical thoughts and actions of Jesus Christ, we must remember a few things:

We are all sinners. 
Romans 3:23 tells us that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

We are to have a spirit of compassion towards everyone,
no matter what they struggle with, because homosexuality is viewed as no different than some things that don’t seem to get us as riled up.

“The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Galtians 5)

Here in Galatians 5, Paul has put sexual immorailty in the same category as jealousy (lots of people guilty of that), fits of rage (again, guilty), selfish ambition (yet again), envy (very guilty), drunkenness (see a pattern here?)…

And he puts sexual immorality in the same category as hatred.  If we are truly acting like “hateful lemmings,” we are committing one of the very sins that God has put in the same category as those we are being accused of hating.

We all need a life-transforming Savior.
“Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.” (1 Timothy )

Paul declared his need for a Savior, and the only way we can hope to live up to having the compassion of Jesus is to pray that he would make us new, every day.

In no way am I condoning homosexuality, but I am also not condoning a lack of compassion towards those who perhaps need His love the most.

Let’s worship our Savior by following His command to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

It’s good to be back at Lord of Life again.

Yesterday’s songs:

Because of Your Love
Most High God
O God, Our Help
Enough
Your Name
You are my King
Faithful One

Vicar Josh’s sermon really hit home to me in one way, which I think all of us as worship leaders, tech leaders, web designers, pastors or whatever should take to heart.  He pointed out that when Moses was struggling with the burden of the Israelites, God took the spirit of Moses and put it onto 70 elders of Israel.  God took Moses’ heart, which was fueled by the Holy Spirit, and gave that same Spirit and heart to the elders.

How often do we think that we can do things on our own?  How often do we feel such heavy burdens and never ask for help?  I know I’m guilty.  Also, how often do we expect those under our leadership to see our vision and catch our spirit if we never share it with them?

Let’s ask God to give us the desire, courage, and humility to be able to ask others to share our burdens and to share with others what our spirit is.

Hey everyone!

It is really good to be back at Lord of Life again.  We had a very fun rehearsal for this upcoming Sunday last night and I’m excited to be able to lead worship again this coming weekend.

The first item about training is a link that I just have to share with anyone reading this.  Anthony Coppedge and Greg Atkinson have teamed up to make this amazingly cool podcast called Creative Synergy.  If you are into technology, into making your staff run smoother, into reaching as many people for Jesus through new and exciting means, this is for you.  Subscribe to it and take a listen.  These guys are interviewing people from all over the world from some great churches and ministries that are making a huge difference.

Secondly, I received a magazine from a video production company called Digital Juice which had a fantastic article in it called “Simple Solutions to Church Media Mistakes.”  In this article, they talked about five simple to fix mistakes that can make a world of difference in how a church presents its media.  I want to focus on one in particular that I think is SO important.

It was #2 on their list, and it was this: Misleading Lyrics.

“If you project lyrics for your songs, you need to time the appearence of the text with the singing carefully.  For a smooth presentation, it is essential that the slides lead, not follow, the singers.”

The magazine mentioned that the problem is that untimely slide changes are a major distraction to people trying to sing what you show.  The solution was absolutely awesome and I hope everyone takes it to heart:

“Attend rehearsals and take good notes.  Meet with the music leader in advance of the rehearsal so you have a full understanding of the order and flow of the service.  The person running the slides is as much a part of the music team as an instrumentalist or vocalist.  Your job is to literally lead the singing.  You need to know the songs as well as anyone on the platform.”

Please know that if you are a part of the media team, you are SO important, not only to your worship director, but to the ease of the congregation being able to sing praises to God without distraction.

Thanks so much to all of our volunteers who come to rehearsals, let’s continue to make our services distraction-free so that those coming to any services can focus on God, our Savior, alone!

Yesterday was another fantastic time of worship where God’s Word was proclaimed and Christ’s body given for us.  Pastor John spoke to us about the fact that everyone, everywhere has a breaking point, but that God would not let that breaking point destroy us.  John shared from 2 Corinthians 4 the amazing limits that God puts on our breaking points. 

“We are hard pressed on every side, BUT not crushed.  We are perplexed, BUT not in despair.  We are persecuted, BUT not abandoned.  We are struck down, BUT not destroyed.”  This is reason to worship God!

The music came together very well.  In light of Bob Kauflin’s recent post on how important it is to have skill within a worship team, I was very excited that Pat, our drummer, nailed the tricky celtic rhythm for the song “His Forever.”  It was awesome!  Thanks for practicing, Pat!

One glitch however, leads me to the title of this post.  Our music ministry has been around for a long time, but the tech teams have only just recently started.  We have not gotten into an established routine of what to do every Sunday morning which caused a bit of a problem.  Last week, we had a guest pastor who must have used a different belt pack than Pastor John, which caused the label on the sound board to get moved.  It didn’t get moved back to Pastor John’s original channel. 

Now, John hadn’t used his microphone until prayer time in the service as the elders are now doing announcements.  I started to strum a bit on the guitar while John was praying and realized very quickly that his microphone was not on.  I started playing as softly as possible (and thankfully our sanctuary is small, so that he could be heard by most of the congregation.)  John’s gain was down too low for any signal to register on the board, and the sound tech wasn’t sure which channel John should be on.  It eventually got fixed, but not until close to the end of the prayers.

This is why it is so important that we always do a sound check on every microphone, especially the pastor’s!  The most important thing about our worship services is that the message of God’s love and grace which leads us to a more Godly life be proclaimed and proclaimed so that it is heard. Paul puts it so well when he says,

“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!…Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” Romans 10:14-15; 17

Earlier I said that thankfully our sanctuary is small, so that he could be heard by most of the congregation.  That’s not good enough.  The Gospel message must be heard by ALL.  We’ll try to consistently do microphone checks for the pastor.  Will you?